Botanical name: Fragaria vesca
The name “Alpine Strawberry” refers to a type of strawberry which is either wild or very close to wild varieties that grow in North America, Europe and parts of Asia. The French refer to these berries as “Fraises des bois” and other names for them include woodland strawberry, wild strawberry or European strawberry.
The reason why I looked into this type of strawberry rather than the readily available type is that the flavour is absolutely amazing; hence they are also referred to as a “gourmet strawberry”. Alpine type strawberries have a long fruiting season but the fruit is smaller than what you’d see in the supermarket. If you take care of the plant well, it will make up for the small size in quantity though but mainly the aroma and taste is totally worth the effort!
Although the original Woodland strawberry plants are found in the wild, there are a number of relatively modern varieties available to grow in your garden. These include:
Baron Von Solemacher
Wild Alexandria
White Soul ; White fruit
Yellow Alpine ; Bright yellow fruit
Golden Alexandria ; Red fruit and golden foliage
As the names of the varieties suggest, alpine strawberries are not necessarily red. There are yellow and white varieties as well which can be sweeter and tastier than red ones. The added benefit to the different colour is that birds are not attracted to them as much so hopefully you’ll get to eat more of them yourself.
Most alpine strawberries do not send out runners like “normal” strawberries do. Instead you propagate them by crown division (if it’s big enough) or seed. The advantage when growing alpine strawberries from seed is that unlike most commercially available strawberry varieties, which are hybrids, alpine strawberries come true from seed so you can save seeds from your own plants and grow more of them. Keep in mind that if you have more than one type of alpine strawberry they will cross pollinate and you might end up with different plants; depending on your mindset this might be exciting also, after all, this is how new varieties are created! You might really like what you end up with.